The last of the countries whose undertakings in science and
technology were studied is Uganda. With a population of nearly 18
million, Uganda is approximately the same size as Ghana; with an
average yearly per capita income of approximately US$200, Uganda
is on approximately the same level as Tanzania. Even more than
both these countries, Uganda has suffered during the 1980s: the
economy that has emerged from this period of hardship is one that
is only just beginning to function again.

Our purposes in this chapter are, first, to describe briefly
Uganda's recent economic history, up to and including its
adoption of restoration programmes under the guidance of the IMF
and World Bank. The description will be backed by macro-economic
statistics, drawn almost entirely from published sources. The
nature of the restoration programme will be described, as will
Uganda's responses, at the overall level of the economy.

Secondly, we shall report the results of our survey of
institutions active in the realms of science and technology. Our
own survey covered five institutions: one located in the
agricultural sector, one in the industrial, one on the boundary
of the two sectors, and two in education and planning. The data
that we collected were in part quantitative- relating to the
budges and personnel of the institutions - and in part
qualitative relating to their aims, resources, conduct,
accomplishments and impediments. In addition, we shall draw upon
whatever corroborating material we can; although it must be
admitted that both our material and that of others is scanty.

Thirdly, after the last of the case studies will come a short
summary, whose purpose is solely to record our general
impressions of Uganda's recent progress on advancing science and
technology, and its potential for still further advance. This
summary will be discursive; quantitative analyses will be left
for Part III, where the data from Uganda, both quantitative and
qualitative, will be added to those from the other three
countries and subjected to systematic study.

At the time of its independence, in 1962, Uganda contained
approximately 8 million inhabitants, each of whom enjoyed an
income per capita of a little less than US$200, giving them on
that crude measure approximately the same standard of living as
the inhabitants of Kenya and Tanzania, their two neighbours; and
approximately one half of that of each Ghanaian. National income
in that year of promise was about USh160 billion, expressed in
constant prices of 1987.

Since then, the Ugandan economy has fluctuated widely. GDP
rose in 1971 to a height of USh208 billion (at 1987 prices - see
Table 6.1), fell to a low of USh152 billion in 1980: the fall
from the peak of 1971 to the trough of 1980 was approximately 25
per cent. The subsequent rise has been slightly higher, to an
estimated USh300 billion in the latest year.

Had the population of Uganda remained constant, income per
capita would have followed the same path; but from the initial
population of approximately 8 million the number of Ugandans has
more than doubled to the present total of a little less than 18
million (see Table 6.2). Income per capita, again expressed in
constant prices of 1987, declined from the peak of a little over
USh20,000 in 1971 to the minimum of USh12,000 in 1980. In that
awful decade, the Ugandans' standard of living, as measured by
GDP per capita, fell by 40 per cent. Since then, although the
economy has started to recover in both absolute terms and in
terms of income per capita, the current figure is still below
that attained at the time of independence.

That the economy of Uganda should have been in eclipse during
the 1980s is quite understandable, when one recalls the military
incursion into Tanzania, occurring just before the decade began,
and the subsequent civil unrest within Uganda itself. By 1982,
the foreign adventure had terminated, and Uganda was in a
position to receive US$70 million from the World Bank as the
first of its loans under the Economic Recovery programme. A
second loan was advanced by the World Bank in 1984 in the amount
of US$50 million. The state of the Ugandan economy in the early
1980s was so fragile that the Economic Recovery loans were at
their best stabilizing; they helped solely to prevent a further
deterioration. It was only towards 1990, with the arrival of the
third Economic Recovery loan from the World Bank, that Uganda was
able to contemplate economic advance. The sum of money, US$65
million, was no larger than the previous amounts, but the economy
was in a better position to take advantage of it.

Table 6.1 Uganda: GDP (at market prices) 1969-1991

Year

GDP
(billions current USh)

GDP
deflator (1987=100)

GDP
(billions USh at constant 1987 prices)

Exchange
rate (annual average conversion factor, USh per $US)

GDP
(billions current US dollars)

1969

0.08

0.04

193.1

0.050

1.6

1970

0.10

0.05

195.6

0.050

2.0

1971

0.11

0.05

208.2

0.050

2.2

1972

0.11

0.05

205.9

0.050

2.2

1973

0.13

0.07

199.8

0.060

2.2

1974

0.16

0.08

202.9

0.070

2.3

1975

0.23

0.12

192.1

0.090

2.5

1976

0.27

0.14

197.1

0.100

2.7

1977

0.54

0.27

200.1

0.170

3.2

1978

0.59

0.32

186.8

0.230

2.6

1979

0.88

0.55

159.2

0.400

2.2

1980

1.26

1.2

151.6

1.00

1.3

1981

2.30

1.5

163.0

2.00

1.2

1982

3.32

2.1

182.1

2.00

1.7

1983

5.01

2.9

206.5

3.00

1.7

1984

10.5

4.9

216.4

4.00

2.1

1985

26.5

12.6

213.2

11.00

2.4

1986

61.9

29.9

209.6

16.00

3.9

1987

220

100.0

222.5

51.00

4.3

1988

613

260.8

237.7

250.8

2.5

1989

1,153

455.8

256.4

396.1

2.9

1990

1,560

588.9

270.2

570.1

2.7

1991

2,158

795.7

281.0

832.5

2.6

1992

n.a.

n.a.

286.0

n.a.

n.a

1993

n.a.

n.a.

306.1

n.a.

n.a

Sources:
1969-1991: World Bank, World Tables 1991, 1993
(figures for the GDP Deflator for the period 1969-1980 are
calculated by dividing GDP at current prices by GDP at
constant 1987 prices)
1992, 1993: Fitzgerald, 1993

Although its command over the economy in 1988 was quite
meagre, the Ugandan government was in a better position than it
had been in the immediate past to exert some influence. Realizing
this, the World Bank imposed conditions upon the granting of the
Economic Recovery loan. These conditions were necessarily less
severe than those imposed upon countries with stable regimes, but
they still included typical pledges: a reduction in government
deficit, preferably by a reduction in government expenditures; a
bringing of the exchange rate into alignment with the rate
existing in the parallel markets; reduction of government
involvement in industry and trade; and a freeing of prices,
particularly those received by farmers.

In the three previous countries we have studied, the civil
service of each has been sufficiently numerous and skilled to be
able to plan for the meeting of the World Bank's conditions. In
Uganda, such governmental resources did not exist, and could be
provided only by expatriates. The Ugandan government has welcomed
such people, who have augmented the staff of the Economic
Planning Commission and organized its work. As a result, the
attainment of the conditions imposed by the World Bank, a foreign
institution, is largely in the hands of another group of
foreigners. One need not doubt the objective of each of these two
groups, which is to improve the performance of the Ugandan
economy; but it does seem rather strange that one foreign group
should be setting the standards of performance, and a second
foreign group ensuring that those standards are met.

The movements in the overall level of income, and in the
average received by each citizen, disguise considerable changes
in the relative share of each of the sectors of the economy. In
1963, the first year for which data on shares are available,
agriculture contributed 53 per cent of GDP, industry 13 per cent
and services 34 per cent. Seventeen years later, in 1980 when the
economy was at its lowest point (see Table 6.3), the share of
agriculture had increased to 72 per cent, and the shares of
industry and services had fallen to 5 per cent and 23 per cent
respectively. By now both industry and services have recovered
somewhat, to 12 per cent and 37 per cent of total GDP; but their
share of industry is no higher that it was 30 years before. The
share of services is higher than it was in 1963, but much if not
all of the increase is represented by military expenditures,
which still consume over one-fifth of the government's Recurrent
Budget (see Table 6.4).